Man sentenced for smuggling aliens Hartland resident to serve six months in prison, pay fine of $1,000

BANGOR – A Hartland man was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Bangor to six months in prison for smuggling illegal aliens into Maine more than five years ago.

Keith Martin, 29, also was sentenced to two years of supervised release after completing his prison term and was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. He was ordered to report on Aug. 28 to a prison to be determined by the U.S. Department of Corrections. Martin remains free on $5,000 cash bail but may not travel outside the state without permission.

He faced up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The federal sentencing guidelines recommended that Martin be sentenced to between six and 12 months in prison.

Martin waived indictment and pleaded guilty in March to bringing two females from Malaysia and a Canadian man who had been born in China across the border near Orient on Oct. 30, 2000. Although an arrest warrant was issued the next month, Martin was not arrested until Dec. 28, 2005.

He moved to Hartland a year ago to live with his sister but did not know he was a wanted man when he crossed the border at Houlton on Dec. 28, 2005, after visiting family in Canada, Martin’s attorney, Jon Haddow of Bangor, said earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock said in handing down the sentence that he was “reluctant to assume the best and equally reluctant to assume the worst” about what might have happened to the females, then age 17 and 19. Both females told agents that they had arranged to work in a restaurant but did not know the name of the business or their potential employer.

Woodcock said that because the two females were still teenagers and were accompanied by a then 41-year-old man, he could not dismiss the possibility that they might be victims of human trafficking bound for prostitution.

“In the broader context of this crime, I can’t ignore the possibility that the reasons behind it could have been much more sinister,” Woodcock said Wednesday. “The defendant was the last in a long line of an international trafficking ring.”

Martin’s sister urged Woodcock to sentence her brother to probation, which was an option the judge had under the federal sentencing guidelines.

Woodcock said that a prison term was necessary to deter others and due to Martin’s extensive criminal history in Canada, which could not be used to increase his sentence under the guidelines.

“You are a very, very lucky man,” the judge said Wednesday. “You may not think you are lucky but you are. If you had committed those crimes in the United States, you would be facing between 15 months and more than two years in prison.”

Martin has “kept his nose clean” since moving to Maine, the judge added.

Border Patrol agents questioned Martin, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada, on Oct. 30, 2000, after he and the three illegal aliens were picked up by border agents at a home in Orient, according to court documents. Officials were alerted by a homeowner, whose house is on East Grand Lake, that a man who was soaking wet had knocked on his back door and asked to use the telephone because his car had broken down.

When agents arrived, they followed footprints in the snow and mud to a home about a half-mile away. Inside, they found Martin, Chih Chen Yen, a Chinese national; Lee Koon Low and Yen H. L., a juvenile, both of Malaysia.

Edward Francis of Burnt Church, New Brunswick, the man Martin called for assistance, was discovered a short time later driving very slowly on the Boundary Line Road in Orient. He told agents, according to court documents, that he was looking for a friend whose car had broken down.

Martin, according to court documents, told agents that he had agreed to bring the three into the country in a boat across East Grand Lake. He told agents that he got wet when he jumped into the lake as it began drifting in the current and pulled the boat to the U.S. shore. They then began knocking on doors so Martin could call Francis to pick them up.

Low told agents that she and the juvenile a few weeks earlier in Toronto had contacted Chen who agreed to help them find work in the U.S., according to court documents. The trio met Martin in Miramichi, New Brunswick, then boarded the boat.

The juvenile immediately was turned over to immigration officials. Chen and Low were deported after being sentenced to 15 days in jail or time served after pleading guilty in November 2000 to concealment of facts about re-entry. Charges against Francis are pending, according to court documents.

In an unrelated case, Woodcock on Wednesday sentenced a Canadian man to five months and two weeks in prison or time served for re-entering the United States after deportation.

Joshua Allan Johnson, 26, of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, is expected to be deported. He was arrested on Feb. 9 at the Calais border crossing after having been removed from the U.S. in 1998.